Daniel studied chemistry at the University of Strasbourg (France) and completed his PhD in chemistry at the University of Ulm (Germany) in 2006. Afterwards, he worked as project leader at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Research and Technology (Empa, Switzerland) for 3 years. In 2009, he then joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Germany) as group leader for 6 years. He is now faculty member at VISTEC where he heads the Max Planck-VISTEC Joint Research Center for Sustainable Materials, a unique laboratory in Thailand, which is a partner with the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research.